Ninja 1000
Ninja 1000
CW FIRST RIDE
Lees naked, more fun?
JOHN BURNS
THE ROAD UP NORTHERN CALIfornia’s Mt. Tamalpais is paved with good intentions but covered in a thick coniferous carpet of dropped foliage from the huge redwood and Douglas firs that canopy it. Hmmm, is this any place for a 50-year-old moto-journalist on a 503-pound, 136-horsepower Kawasaki? At first, it seems like a terrible idea, but after slithering through a few corners, you figure out this is a really friendly, well-insured Kawasaki that’s got your back. All that new bodywork tells the casual observer it’s another one of them “Ninjabikes.” But with upright ergos similar to those of the Z1000 naked it’s built upon, this newest Ninja puts the rider in a position of complete control to deal with dodgy traction, flying fellow squids and all the other slings, arrows and banana peels the road throws at him. Pretty soon, the smell of all that fresh pine sizzling on hot exhaust takes me right back to circa 1965, jumping in raked-up piles of pine needles just before my dad did what they all did in those pre-green days— throw on a match.
To go with the great ergonomics, Kawasaki gave this one full-coverage plastic designed to draw engine heat away from the rider, a three-position, manual-adjust windscreen, 10mmthicker seat foam, rubber-covered footpegs, etc. Not only is the new Ninja 1000 a clothed naked bike, Kawasaki thinks it could also bridge the gap to its Concours 14 for riders who want a lighter, less-complex sport-tourer. To that end, it also gets a 5-gallon fuel tank and a bunch of available options, including hard saddlebags.
As to why you’d clothe such a great naked bike in the first place, Kawasaki’s research and experience tell it that’s what American riders want; and at $10,999, the new fairing only adds $400 to what you’d pay for the naked Z1000, so what the heck?
Mainly what it gets is a killer of a classic Kawasaki four-banger, just like the 1043cc unit that powers the Z1000. Power comes on smoothly enough from way low in the rev band to let the rear Bridgestone BT-016 find traction even on this Christmas-tree-killing floor of a road. And on those rare clean stretches where the pavement briefly uncoils, the thing pulls hard from as little as 3500 rpm. Kawasaki says, thanks to the Ninja’s bodywork, the bike reaches terminal velocity quicker than the Z1000, and because of that, its speed is electronically governed to a mph the Kawasaki spokespeople would not divulge—an admission, to a bunch of motojournalists, tantamount to Mission Control Houston initiating countdown.
Sadly, due to traffic and lack of long straights in appropriate places, all I can say is that limit lies somewhere on the other side of 136 mph indicated on the bike’s digital display. On
the straights through inhabited areas, though, you can drop the engine down to 1500 rpm and 25 mph in sixth, roll the throttle open, and the Ninja will pull itself right back up to speed with no complaints whatsoever. Way flexible.
With this engine, an automatic gearbox would be redundant.
On a racetrack, a ZX-1 OR or any Open-class sportbike would annihilate the Ninja. Sorting through Mt. Tam’s endless junk drawer of slippery, blind comers, on the other hand, the tables are turned. With its immediate, smooth grunt off the bottom and sit-up, wide-barred ergos (the grips are actually 10mm closer to each other than on the Z1000), the Ninja feels more like a big, faired-in adventure bike, with the majority of your weight planted squarely on your butt and feet, where you can feel what both tires are up to. (The rear enjoys roosting the people behind you with pine-tree shrapnel. Toothpick, anyone?) At the same time, in spite of the claimed 22lb. weight gain, the Ninja steers lightly, quickly and accurately.
The 41mm fully adjustable fork and preload/rebound-adjustable shock are on the harsh side of plush compared to the components Kawasaki puts on its more expensive bikes, but then I’m 20 or 30 pounds lighter than the typical American Ninja buyer. The Bridgestones and suspension do a fine job keeping things balanced front-torear and the bike pointed in the right direction—not such an easy thing given the torque the engine doles out. Accelerating hard over truly bumpy pavement with the front wheel only marginally in ground contact,
the bike always kept its composure, even without benefit of a steering damper. And radial-mount front brake
calipers operated by a radial-pump master cylinder don’t feel budget at all; they’re two-finger powerful, linear-feeling and nicely sensitive to trail braking.
Even though we only covered a couple hundred miles in our day with the new Ninja, nearly every one of those miles was hard-fought, and when the sun was
cycleworld.com/ninja1000
setting into the Pacific at the end of it, we all would’ve been happy to keep on riding. Sportbike performance and sporttouring
comfort are a tough combination to beat, especially with a new fairing to broaden the market appeal of a bike that was already really appealing (the Z1000 was CWs Best Standard in 2010). Kawasaki’s research also showed that lots of people who buy “performance cruisers” like the Suzuki Ml09 aren’t necessarily cruiser guys, but they might very well be performance guys no longer willing to assume the sportbike position the performance war left in its wake. Alrighty then, says Kawasaki. This Ninja’s for you.
